How to Use Keywords in Your Website

Keywords are important to website owners because using the right keywords (i.e. words people are searching for) contributes to visitorship or a website’s traffic.

However, when determining how to use keywords in your website, you must refrain from leaning towards keyword stuffing – loading your page/post with too many keywords to a point that your content doesn’t add value to the visitor or simply doesn’t make sense.

What are Keywords?

Before you learn how to use keywords in your content, you need to understand what keywords are, what keywords you can use in your niche, whether people are looking for those keywords.

Firstly, keywords are simply words or phrases people type into the bar of search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo in their search for answers to various issues.

These keywords could start with broad searches like :

“decor” to specific ones such as

“interior decor for living room” to more specific ones like

“interior decor for small space living room“

The difference between broad and specific (also known as long tail keywords) for you as website owner is that the former may be more competitive, meaning that it might be harder for your website to get placed in the first page of SERPs (search engine results pages).

The essence of using keywords in your website content is to get ranked in the first page of search engines so that people will find your website and visit it. But if your website is not in the first page of the search results, then your website is unlikely to get ‘seen’ by people looking for that particular keyword because generally people hardly bother to look at the second and subsequent pages of the search results. Just ask yourself, as a person whose looking for some information using search engines, how often do you look up the second and subsequent pages of search results? Hardly? Me too!

Getting Ideas for Keywords

Just to give you a background information on online searches – 85 percent of Internet users (currently standing at more than 1.4 billion) use search engines to look for information, product reviews, etc. Out of these, more than 70 percent will use Google to do their searches.

This is the reason why we should pay attention to HOW and WHAT people search for in Google. As website owners, we want to capitalize on what we know about people’s behaviour in Google and create content such that it not only bring benefits to visitors but also to us, in terms of traffic and conversions.

Getting traffic this way (visitors coming to your websites after finding you in the higher rankings of SERPs) is called organic traffic. This is good traffic as you don’t pay for anything – perhaps just your time in researching keywords and organising your content around those keywords.

Apart from knowing what people are looking for in search engines, you must also understand the concept of “competition” in keyword search. This means knowing the number of other web pages having the same keywords which have already been indexed by Google.

Which Keywords to Use?

The basic rule about using keywords in your content is to look for those terms which are high in the number of searches and low in competition.

Now, using Google Instant, as shown in the above diagram, is one way you can get ideas on what people are looking for in this search engine. In the above example, as you type in “interior decor ideas” you are also shown other searches that people are interested in. Yes, these are real search terms people type into Google. What that does for you is it gives you an idea of the list of keywords you can use in your content.

However, you can’t be using all the keywords related to a particular topic. So how do you find the most appropriate?

You need to look at your “competition” for the same keyword you have chosen to use.

If you look at the search term “interior decor ideas” above, you would notice that Google also gives you the 15,300,000 results (highlighted in yellow) – that’s the number of competiting pages using the exact keyword “interior decor ideas” or related term.

To find out how many competiting web pages there are for the exact term “interior decor ideas”, you place the keyword in the search bar with quotes, as shown below :

Google shows you 778,000 results which point to your competition. That’s just too many web pages for you to be competiting with. There are different opinions on what’s the best number of competition to go for but as a general rule, go for those with 50,000 results or less.

The more specific you are in your keyword term, the lower the competition will be but you must also balance this with the number of keyword searches because this reflects the ‘popularity’ of that keyword and how interested people are in searching for it.

How Many Searches Are There For Your Keyword?

Using Google Instant can give you ideas on your competition. But you also want to know how many searches there are for the keyword you want to use.

You can go to Google Adwords – Then from the top menu, click on “Tools” and select “Keyword Planner” from the drop-down menu. Next, you choose the “search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category”.

If you type in “interior decor ideas”, you would get something like the above results.

Now, analysing the table above, you would note that there are hundreds of searches for “home decor ideas” but the competition is “medium”. Looking at “bedroom decor” there are more than 70,000 searches and the competition is low. This gives me the idea that if I were to choose home interior niche for my website, I might focus on bedroom decor instead of the whole house.

Of course, I would then have to dig deeper into the exact keywords that I can use to match the products that I want to promote in the website.

The point here is that you can make use of Google Instant and the Keyword Planner to search for keywords that you can use in your website.

How to Use Keywords in Your Website?

OK, now that you’ve got a list of keywords that you’re thinking to use on your website. The question is how to properly use them.

Earlier in this post, I mentioned keyword stuffing – something you should stay away from. However, that’s not saying you can’t use more than one keyword term in the same post – for instance, you can use “interior decor ideas” and “interior decor ideas for your bedroom”.

However, you must exercise discretion and don’t ever lose sight that you are building your website not only as a business but also as a reliable source of information for your visitors. You want your content to make sense and your website be the “go to” place for people before they make any informed decision.

Personally, in an article of about 1000 words, I’d incorporate three keyword terms with one or two variations.

How to Get Your Keywords to Rank?

Most times, an easier way to do keyword search is to go for paid keyword search tool. As a member of Wealthy Affiliate, however, I get to use the incorporated keyword tool which gives me information on number of keyword searches per month, competition, PPC, etc.

This certainly reduces the time in your search for keywords.

Thing about Goolge algorithm is that it is made up of many factors, not to mention that it’s subject to change.

Having said that however, a simple rule to follow is to go for those search terms which may not have too many searches but have very low competition.

For more information on this subject, you might want to watch the video from the link below:

About The Author

Zailinah

I was a serial online product buyer till I found success in affiliate marketing. I created About Online Business to share my experience. As you are well aware, success is no walk in the park. But perseverance pays. Your opinion is important to me so feel free to share your thoughts. Our views may differ but that does not mean we can't learn from each other. Go ahead, leave me your thoughts below:)

Well written and highly informative piece on keywords and how to use them properly. Keyword placement can be a difficult task to perform for beginners. This post deals nicely with the issue.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

Hello,
This is a very good article. It is very helpful for the beginner. Alot of people building website don’t have good information on building their site . A lot of people pay to learn what you have given for free. Awesome job!

Thanks Gloria. I agree that one of the most common issues for beginners is info overload. And my intention is to help such online marketers unclutter that and channel their energy on what’s more important for their progress.